How to Generate Sustainable Electricity Simply

Generating electricity is fairly easy.  All you need to do to get a bit of electricity going is to knock a few electrons off here and there, and you’ll get a bit of charge.  Anyone can do it – all you need to do is stroke a cat in dry weather, rub a balloon with a woolly jersey or bounce on a trampoline wearing fleece.  

This is generating electricity, all right, but you are only generating static electricity.  As soon as it can, static electricity will discharge – the balloon will stick to the ceiling, the cat will give off sparks, the metal rim of the trampoline will “zap” you – and lightning will strike.  This is not useable electricity.  

Generating useable electricity means generating a current in something conductive (namely wiring).  The initial charge is started when a few electrons get moved from one atom in the conductor to another, so the atom that is missing a few electrons attracts electrons from the next one along in the circuit, and so on.  It’s sort of like one of those card games where the person on your left takes one of your cards while you take one from the person on your right.  In general, three main ways of generating electricity are used:

• Moving a magnet in and out of a coil of wire (movement, current and magnets have a fascinating relationship – magnets will move out of a coil of wire that has a current in the wire, which is how electric motors work, and wrapping wire around a metal bar many times and putting a current through the wire will make the metal bar into a magnet);
• Chemical reactions – certain metals will generate electricity when combined with acid.  This is the general principle behind batteries.  You can make a small basic battery generating electricity enough to light an LED using copper coins, tin foil and vinegar, or coins, zinc nails and lemons. Archaeologists have discovered artefacts from ancient times that may have been used this way before being forgotten.
• The photovoltaic effect.  This involves quantum physics, but basically, what happens is the energy of sunlight can knock a few electrons loose from certain materials.  This is the basic principle behind solar panels.

Most methods of generating electricity use kinetic energy (motion), magnets and coils (induction).  All you need for induction is the coil-and-magnet apparatus (which is generally called a generator) and a force to move the magnet.  This usually involves circular motion and pistons.  The kinetic force needed for generating electricity can come from a number of sources:

• Muscle power – old dynamo bike lights worked like this, and this principle was used in a number of silly jokes involving exercise wheels and mice (or squirrels, as in the old movie Flubber).  This is not commonly used, but maybe in gyms of the future, we could see the exercycles and the like rigged to generators (extreme right-wingers might also mention prisons, treadmills and hard labour for certain crimes…)
• Steam power.  Water is heated to boiling and the resulting steam drives the turbine.  This is how coal, nuclear and gas fired power stations work.  As these use non-renewable resources or have other environmental risks, providers are starting to look at other ways of generating electricity.  However, burning landfill gas or methane produced by sewage and farm waste has less polluting by-products and is renewable.  Another renewable source of heat is geothermal – using the heat of the planet’s core and mantle where it comes through in volcanic areas to heat water.
• Wind power – this is a new use for the centuries-old technology of the windmill.  This can be done on a large scale or small scale.
• Water power(hydro) – flowing water, whether moved by gravity and/or pressure (as in most hydro dams) or by the daily ebb and flow of the tides, has a lot of power that is easily harnessed, is reliable and is “clean” with no emissions.